A more insidious upheaval was quietly erupting in the interior sectors of the Imperium's vast domains.
It came not from an invading fleet, but from a cancer that had long since taken root within: the Genestealer Cult.
These pockets of xenos corruption, lurking at the very bottom of Imperial society and in its darkest corners, suddenly erupted like a swarm receiving a single command.
"For the Four-Armed Emperor! Purge the filth! Devour the heretics!"
Fanatical whispers echoed through sewage pipes beneath hive cities, abandoned workshops on forge worlds, and the depths of enormous granaries on agricultural planets.
This was no longer cautious infiltration, but open rebellion.
Cultists whose minds had been twisted by Tyranid genetic contamination poured from the shadows they occupied like a tide, wielding crude weapons or even fighting bare-handed.
Their targets were not the heartlands of Imperial rule, but those strongholds... that the Enslavers had quietly corrupted without the Imperium noticing!
In Hive Primus-7.
Deep in the shadowy underhive, a Patriarch led a mixed force of Hybrid Neophytes and aberrants in a brazen assault on an underground gang stronghold that had fallen out of control following an Enslaver incursion.
Twisted psychic tendrils clashed furiously with the claws and acidic saliva of second- and third-generation Genestealers in narrow alleys choked with toxic mist.
Flesh flew everywhere, while psychic shrieks interfered with the Genestealers' mental resonance, creating a piercing storm of noise.
They fought not for territory, but to destroy their equally twisted "kin" under Enslaver control: the purestrain Genestealer hosts kept as a stable source of "food," and the Magus stretched into a Flesh Portal.
On the agri world of New Canaan.
Inside an enormous grain storage tower.
The Genestealers had contaminated the place and made it their headquarters.
They sowed genetic contamination into the grain, attempting to